There is this scene in "Gandhi", one of my all time favorite movies, where one of the policemen says "He is coming" referring to Gandhi's arrival in Champaran (See video clip here. Its quite impressive). Well, when I think of the upcoming availability of the XO laptop on Amazon starting November 17, I am reminded of that phrase - "He is coming". While the XO isn't quite Gandhi himself, its impact can be quite revolutionary. Powered by Sugar (no Windows XP for the November sale) it essentially democratizes the access to computing, and hence information. We've witnessed what crowdsourcing can do in cases of Wikipedia and Free and Open Source Software.

One of my Indian friends called the OLPC project as "yet another attempt by the West to throw us something useless". Well, if you take a look at the contributors on all mailing lists at OLPC and Sugarlabs, your geographic compass will go haywire! There isn't a continent that hasn't contributed to this project (except for Antarctica...can someone be the first? hint hint!). There is no "West" if the software and content are free and open.How many languages does Sugar support? Here's the list:

Take a look for yourself and jump in to help. https://dev.laptop.org/translate/

Gandhi, in spite of all he did and did not do, is remembered as a national hero in India and as a proponent of non-violent civil disobedience worldwide. I also see him as quite the hacker.

Surprised? Read on.

His software was civil disobedience and his hardware was Khadi (खादी), or homespun. He gave people the idea that they could bypass the monopoly of the British clothing industry and substitute it with homespun - fabric made from threads spun by the masses in villages. See the parallel here? They had no Git or Launchpad, but they surely had hand-powered charkhas to spin cotton into yarn and looms to weave homespun threads into rough cloth. The cloth that ended up covering the bodies of the masses, and eventually adopted by the likes of Nehru as well. 

 

I have stopped using Microsoft Office pretty much. I do have a licensed copy from my employer, so if I really need to fire it up, I can always find a computer to do so. We teach Microsoft Access in one of our classes (yes, that's a long story, but let's not digress) so sometimes I have to fire it up. However, for all practical purposes, I use OpenOffice only, primarily on Ubuntu, and sometimes on Windows at work in one of the labs. The most compelling reason? I do not want my intellectual property to be encumbered by a proprietary format. Its that simple. So, I stick with Open Document Format for ALL my work. Sounds like civil disobedience? Maybe. However, I don't force anyone to do so. Heck! If Microsoft Office supported ODF natively, I wouldn't complain as much!

That's where the other compelling reason comes in. One of my colleagues (no names) asked me a few weeks ago: "Why do you use the Linux stuff? What do they give you? Money? Support?". My answer: "Choice. I can't think of anything that's more American."

Software is meant to make our lives easier, not difficult. Its a means to an end, and not the end in itself. We are not here to support corporate business models. They are here to support us. I am not against making money. I cannot be. I am a business professor. All I ask for, is that the user come first. Solve my problem, and I will gladly give you money for that support. Don't take my money and ask me to bend to your gargantuan visions of digital tyranny.

Anyway, its good to see that projects in all shapes and sizes are taking off which leverage Free and Open Source Software in various forms. Everything from wireless routers to NASA's Mars Rovers use FOSS, and now many hundreds of thousands of children do so as well. Want to keep count? Start here.

So, coming back to the "It is coming..." topic. Well, in five weeks, it will be available again. To the masses. The XO, that is.

Nirav Patel has whipped up some neat graphics for the upcoming Amazon.com sale. Its a subtle twist on the Give one and Get one theme. You get a laptop, but the other one goes to a child in Rwanda, Mongolia, Haiti, etc. The PNG along with the original SVG is available at http://eclecti.cc/olpc/my-other-laptop for your hackery.